Tag Archives: protest

This is how UK politicians and media control the narrative on Israel and Gaza

Don’t believe the gaslighters: babies are dying in Gaza – not because of anything Hamas did, but because Israel chose to deny power to the hospital that was caring for them. That isn’t Israel defending itself; it is Israel murdering babies. Only a few weeks ago, Israel was asking us to sympathise with its people on the basis of a lie that Israeli babies had been murdered by Hamas. Do you see how this works?

I know he’s divisive but this YouTube clip by Owen Jones is right on the button.

It immortalises an exchange – more like a confrontation – between the Guardian columnist and primarily Ed Balls, former (useless) Shadow Chancellor who now podcasts with the man who was the UK’s actual Chancellor, George Osborne (see how cosy these guys are?)

And it wasn’t over the horrifying carnage being wrought in Gaza – upon, as Jones rightly states, babies as much as everyone else; it was over the way the vast majority of UK politicians and the mainstream media have been trying to gaslight us all into thinking that Israel is somehow in the right.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

The behaviour of all those in the studio around Jones – but Balls in particular – is highly instructive:

At the end of the day, we all know that Israel is wrong to do what it is doing.

We are watching genocide.

If Israel had any interest in removing Hamas, it would have run an espionage operation to spy out all that organisation’s hiding-places long ago, and then after the October 7 attacks, it would have carried out surgical strikes on those hiding-places. It would also have engaged in international diplomacy to expose and remove Hamas from its bases in other countries. That did not happen.

Instead, Israel has waded into Gaza and is piling up the bodies of innocent people.

Politicians from Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer down have lined up to say Israel has a right to do this because it is defending itself, despite the fact that Israel has already murdered many times the number of innocents that Hamas killed on October 7 (most Israeli casualties were military, remember) without making any real dent in the organisation that it claims is its real enemy.

And when commentators like Jones point out the falsehoods in their arguments, media interviewers like Balls turn up to pick holes in the claims, on the basis that any tiny inconsistency in what Jones says under pressure must mean his entire line of reasoning is wrong. ‘Tisn’t.

You saw it very clearly in the clip, when it was claimed that people on Saturday’s (November 11) peace march were preaching hate – so that meant everybody on the march had to be a racist and an anti-Semite. They very obviously weren’t.

Owen Jones is right. The UK’s politicians – and their client media (and let’s be generous here and agree that it doesn’t include every single member of the UK media establishment – just most of them) – are trying to gaslight us into believing a lie that Israel has to commit genocide in Gaza in order to defend itself.

And he’s right about another element of this: history will judge those people harshly.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Right-wingers rush to boost Braverman after ‘police bias’ article

Sulky: Suella Braverman is acting like a schoolgirl trying to stir up trouble over imaginary insults.

Suella Braverman is facing calls to resign as Home Secretary – or be pushed out – after The Times published an article in which she accused the police of left-wing bias.

But does she need to fear for her job when hard-right lunatics on the social media are rushing to support her?

The BBC has reported the issue as follows:

She claimed aggressive right-wing protesters were “rightly met with a stern response”, while “pro-Palestinian mobs” were “largely ignored”.

The article was not cleared by Downing Street and suggested changes to the text were not followed, No 10 said.

Some Tories have called for the home secretary to be sacked.

It comes ahead of a Pro-Palestinian march for a ceasefire in Gaza, which is due to take place in central London on Saturday.

It strikes This Writer as odd that – for example – the Metropolitan Police, which has been found to be institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic – all right-wing faults, should be accused of lefty bias.

But it seems to me that Braverman may have used her article, in advance of the Armistice Day march calling for peace in Gaza (which she opposes), to stir up her attack dogs.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

Let’s have a look at what some of them have been saying (with relevant responses where possible):

Let’s have another response, covering the lockdown comment:

For clarity: Danny Kruger is a Conservative MP and his claims about the Armistice Day march are all false. It is not a march in sympathy with terrorism and it does not call for Israel to be dissolved. The only conclusion one should draw from his post is that he should be removed from Parliament as soon as possible.

The danger with this one is that Ms Wallersteiner may be seen to be inviting people to believe that everybody taking part in the peace marches have been calling for Jews to die and ripping down posters of Israeli hostages. In fact, the peace marches have all included substantial contingents of Jewish participants, and it seems highly unlikely that they would call for their fellow Jews to be killed.

Just to hammer the point home, let’s have another response to the same post:

I’m sure you get the gist by now; right-wing mouthpieces have come out in support of Braverman but nothing they say makes any sense.

Sadly, as some of the responses have pointed out, the cack-handed way the Armistice Day march has been handled by politicians like Braverman means hard-right-wing nutcases have organised themselves to converge on London and hold demonstrations of their own.

It seems they are determined to converge on the cenotaph that politicians, police and the media have said should be left alone as a mark of respect.

These are people who say they support Braverman’s point of view, remember.

Let’s see what happens on the day and lay any blame where it belongs afterwards.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Falsehoods fly over sit-in at Kindertransport destination station

Peaceful: pro-Palestinian protesters staged a sit-in at Liverpool Street Station in London. No passengers or services were disrupted, despite the false claims of social media commentators. Note the “From the River to the Sea” sign, quoting a chant that many claim is anti-Semitic – and many claim is not.

More than 500 people joined a pro-Palestine sit-in at Liverpool Street Station at around 5.30pm yesterday (October 31, 2023), to demand a ceasefire and an end to arms exports to Israel.

The demonstration was peaceful and there were no reports of violence or disturbances.

But that didn’t stop some people making wildly inaccurate claims!

Principle among these has to be the bane of This Writer’s life, Rachel Riley. The Countdown co-presenter posted a message on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), claiming this of people at the sit-in: “An angry mob screams ‘Jihad now’.”

In fact, it seems more likely that they were chanting, “Ceasefire now,” as other sources have quoted them:

In fairness, she wasn’t the only one making this mistake; it seems the historian Simon Schama misheard them also, and claimed they were shouting, “Intifada.”

Ms Riley may also have been shamed into removing her post by the fact that the event was at least partly organised by Jews Against Genocide:

It’s hard to claim an event is anti-Semitic when it has been set up by Jews.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

I’m told this is the latest in a string of ‘X’ posts by Ms Riley. Initially I called for people to ignore her and deny her the oxygen of publicity but clearly this was more hopeful than realistic.

Perhaps it would be better to remind people that the person responsible for this kind of wild inaccuracy once took me to court for libel and won, for a reason that makes very little sense (I may elaborate on this later, after referring to the judgment).

Anybody feeling that there is an injustice in what happened to me is invited to support the fund to pay my court costs in the following ways (yes, it’s still going):

Make a donation via the CrowdJustice page. Keep donating regularly until you see the total pass the amount I need.

Email your friends, asking them to pledge to the CrowdJustice site.

Post a link to Facebook, asking readers to pledge.

On Twitter, tweet in support, quoting the address of the appeal.

And don’t forget that if you’re having trouble, or simply don’t like donating via CrowdJustice, you can always donate direct to me via the Vox Political PayPal button, where it appears on that website. But please remember to include a message telling me it’s for the crowdfund!

If either Ms Riley or Mr Schama want to take advantage of the right of reply to put their side of the story, they should feel free to do so.

Returning to the sit-in: Ms Riley mentioned in her (deleted) post that Liverpool Street Station was where the Kindertransport children – Jewish youngsters who escaped certain death in Germany due to the efforts of people including Nicholas Winton – arrived in the UK.

This Writer would hazard a guess that this was the reason it was chosen as the location for the sit-in; as a reminder that it is still relatively recently that many Jewish people’s lives were in terrible danger and that – rather than subject other innocent people’s lives to the same danger – they have a duty to pay on the kindness that they received.

It didn’t stop certain bad-faith actors (or are they simply ignorant dimwits?) from trying to claim the event was anti-Semitism on the march – which is a contradiction in terms, if you think about it. Here are some of the usual offenders.

Karen Pollock’s tweet, below, includes a video clip in which you can clearly here the crowd chanting, “Ceasefire now” – and definitely not “Intifada” or “Jihad now”. Whether anyone was using the “From the River to the Sea” chant is not shown on the clip:

Whether “From the River to the Sea…” is genuinely anti-Semitic is hotly disputed and Ms Pollock is wrong to present only one side, without even acknowledging the other.

But then, it seems Ms Pollock is failing to acknowledge quite a number of important elements…

Former Labour MP Ian Austin falls into the same trap as Ms Pollock – “From the River to the Sea” isn’t chanted in the clip he uses (it’s the same one):

And Tory MP Brandon Lewis, using the same clip, appears appalled that British people should want an end to the violence and mass murders taking place in Gaza:

Labour’s Kate Hoey gets a schooling on safety from musician Phil Gould:

And there’s always this … this… this:

Why Jewish passengers would feel afraid to use a station being occupied by Jewish people is beyond This Writer.

The next one is off-the-scale:

So Heidi here is pushing unsubstantiated claims including one that those taking part in the sit-in were “screaming genocidal chants”, and is upset that British Transport Police took no action against the same event after it became clear that services were not disrupted at all.

Does anybody believe this is rational behaviour?

Does anybody believe any of the posts by critics of the event are rational?

It’s all right to support a particular side in a conflict – whether it’s just a debate or violent conflagration. But it’s not all right to use false claims to stoke ill-feeling.

Sadly, the people whose messages you see above are unlikely to stop.

So those of us with more level heads are going to have to keep debunking them.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Protesters have their say on Israel/Palestine – and it’s not what we’ve been told

Groundswell: a through-the-window view of Westminster Bridge during the pro-Palestine demonstration.

Props to Not The Andrew Marr Show for putting together video clips of the enormous march in support of Palestine on Saturday (October 28, 2023), and interview footage of the participants.

This Writer saw a post on the social media in which a commentator suggested that one person calling for – it was either Jihad, or the dissolution of Israel – was speaking for all the other participants in the march; around half a million people.

Of course that person wasn’t speaking for the majority. It was a lone voice that the mass media chose to use, because it tarred everybody there with a socially-unacceptable demand.

Well, here’s the other side.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

The information supplied to me with the clip stated: “This footage has been put together to show the views of the clear majority of the population who are not being heard on mainstream media.

“Following Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza, over half a million people attended a demonstration in London calling for an immediate ceasefire. This was by far the largest demonstration in support of Palestine.

“It features interviews with protestors as well as speakers including Husam Zomlot, Ismail Patel, Mick Lynch, Matt Wrack, Diane Abbott MP, Richard Burgon MP, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Zarah Sultana MP, Apsana Begum MP, John Finucane MP, Dr Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini and Jeremy Corbyn MP.”

It’s fairly long – 34 minutes or so – and I would suggest that it is well worth your time; it shows you the real views of people who have been de-humanised, alienated and ‘othered’ by the right-wing pro-Israel press.

Footage from Platform Films (producers of Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and Carlos Soto). Commissioned by Crispin Flintoff.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Third massive pro-Palestinian demonstration in London is huge success

Groundswell: a through-the-window view of Westminster Bridge during the pro-Palestine demonstration.

A third – massive – demonstration of solidarity with the people of Gaza has taken place in London, attracting up to 100,000 people, according to the Metropolitan Police.

It was heralded by dire warnings of anti-Semitic sentiment and violence from the usual suspects. Here’s Tory Brexit failure David Frost:

Here’s UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, with a lying claim that the demonstrations were shows of open support for “the Hamas terrorists”:

His call for a more balanced, accurate and fair assessment of what is happening, by the media, is one that This Site would support, though; it is long past time the innocent Palestinians in Gaza had fair representation on our national news media.

There is no impartially-gathered evidence to show that anti-Semitism has increased in the UK.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

And what happened?

Well, this should give an impression of the scale of the event:

There were very few incidents involving the police:

It is sad that any incidents should have occurred that may be treated as hate crimes – but among a crowd of 100,000, this figure is vanishingly small.

Perhaps Rabbi Mirvis and Mr Frost were overstating their case, do you think?

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

BBC apologises for misleading on pro-Palestine demonstrations

Misleading report: these people were not voicing their support for Hamas, BBC.

I was going to do a piece about this but the BBC has – for once – got its correction out first!

In a report on October 16, a BBC newsreader read out the following words:

I would have pointed out that the demonstrations were not about backing Hamas in any way; thousands upon thousands of people across the UK had taken to the streets to show support for the two million innocent Palestinian people whose lives are threatened by Israeli war crimes – collective punishment (cutting off their food, water and power, and bombing innocent civilians in retribution for the attack by Hamas), and forcible transfer (ordering a million of them to move from northern Gaza to the south of the region).

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

But I didn’t get the chance before the BBC broadcast a correction:

Methinks Auntie must have received quite a lot of complaints about that one!

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Crackdown on support for Palestine as Western ‘democracies’ ban free speech

Protesters in France defy the ban on support for Palestine. It seems the French authorities broke up the demonstration, attacking their own people with weapons, after this image was taken. How long before the UK government does the same here?

What happens when your government supports a genocidal, far-right-wing foreign regime, demands that you support its actions in spite of the transparent lies it and its client media are feeding you… and you refuse to comply?

This:

Note that this is not outlawing support for Hamas but for Palestine. It is now illegal, in those countries, to stand up against the genocide of an entire country.

Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!

So much for the Western democracies.

I understand people are already being arrested, here in the UK, for wearing Palestinian colours and/or voicing support for the people who are trapped in Gaza while Israel bombs it into rubble.

I wonder how long it will be before they come for me.

Is this the country you want? A totalitarian dictatorship where standing up for justice, freedom and peace is a crime?

It’s what you’ve got, whether you wanted it or not.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

Keir Starmer does not respond well to protest [VIDEO ARTICLE]

A protester interrupted Keir Starmer’s keynote speech to the Labour Party Conference – and the party leader was not impressed.

“Protest, not power – that’s why we changed the party,” he said after the young man was forcibly dragged off the stage – indicating that Labour is a party that pursues power, and does not listen to protest.

This certainly seems true, considering Starmer’s own track record of ignoring the concerns of others…

WATCH: there’s a lot more in the clip.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

New game: name all the ways the Tory government INTERFERES with your life

Tory interference in our lives: anti-protest laws were rushed into practice before the Coronation, so the police could be used to arrest peaceful protesters and take them off the streets.

I seem to have started something.

Yesterday (September 21), in response to Rishi Sunak’s televised trashing of non-existent ‘Net Zero’ policies which he justified by saying, “We’re making sure government stays out of your life,” I made a couple of points about how government does exactly the opposite:

Look at your energy bill. In return for the payments you make, you receive energy that comes from a number of different sources, including some that are highly polluting. For example: coal, nuclear, gas.

On a separate but related subject, look at the amount of plastic packaging you buy in your everyday grocery shopping, much of which is unnecessary and can end up polluting the environment.

These things happen because the government allows it. Indeed, among Sunak’s measures yesterday was a plan to continue allowing the sale of polluting petrol- and diesel-powered cars for an extra five years, until 2035. Who knows what some future prime minister will do then? Extend it to 2040?

Those are three ways the government interferes with our lives, right there.

But of course, I was missing the really big things that have happened lately. Here’s Peter Stefanovic:

Perhaps we should open this up for everybody to have a say?

You could make a game of it at home: sit in a circle with everybody challenged in turn to name a way the government interferes with their life.

If you are so disposed, it could be a drinking game, with people failing to think of an example taking a sip of their substance of choice (it doesn’t have to be alcohol).

It’ll help pass these lengthening autumn evenings.

And it will help remind us all of what hideous liars the Tories in our government are.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook

If Rachel Reeves represents Labour’s best thinking, the UK is deep in the you-know-what

Fakes: Rachel Reeves, the fake Labour Chancellor, with her fake Labour leader, Keir Starmer.

I don’t know what image Rachel Reeves hoped to present with her stage-managed interview in The Guardian yesterday (Monday, July 10, 2023) – but the one we got was utterly, utterly awful.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, read the article and you’ll see what I mean about stage-management. She comes across as a total fake.

The really disgraceful stuff is in the segment about Ken Loach. The legendary film director was expelled from Labour in August 2021. It came amid accusations of anti-Semitism but that was never given as the reason for pushing him out.

So in the article we get this from Reeves:

(Loach himself was expelled from Labour in 2021 for appearing on a Labour Against the Witchhunt platform way before that organisation was proscribed by the party. The group was formed to campaign against what were seen as politically motivated allegations of antisemitism in the Labour party). This doesn’t sound like a broad coalition, does it? “Look, Keir’s No 1 thing when he became leader was he was going to tear out antisemitism at the roots, and that means there is a zero-tolerance approach.”

I tell her I am Jewish and that I agree with a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism, but the party is so gung-ho that it is now labelling people antisemitic who simply aren’t – and there is a danger of destroying lives in the process.

“Well, look, I’m not on the bodies that make those decisions, so I don’t know the details of that case. But it is so important that we are seen to – and we do – tackle antisemitism. Ken Loach, you might like his films, but his views … well, certainly, they are not ones I share.”

That doesn’t make him antisemitic, I say.

“You don’t think Ken Loach is antisemitic? OK. Well, I think we might have to agree to differ.”

Why does she think he is antisemitic? “Look, I’m not on the bodies that make these decisions, but I think it’s right we have a zero-tolerance approach,” she repeats.

You can’t make such an accusation without supporting it, I say.

“Well, look, I’m not on the body who makes these decisions,” she repeats yet again. Loach later tells me there was no due process in his expulsion: he was just told he was unfit to be a party member; antisemitism wasn’t mentioned.

She couldn’t support her claim that Mr Loach was anti-Semitic for one simple reason: he isn’t. And Labour doesn’t have any evidence to the contrary.

But I’ll tell you who was anti-Semitic: Nancy Astor.

Why do I mention this? Because of this:

If you want proof of Reeves’s support for Astor, I can provide it – because I called on Labour’s then-General Secretary to do something about it:

I never heard back from Jennie Formby. It seems that, like the Tories, the Labour leadership follows a One-Rule-For-You, A-Different-Rule-For-Us principle.

We can follow this through to some of the other things Reeves has said lately, like her refusal to commit to paying public sector workers a fair wage:

Public sector workers have seen their pay crumble away under the Tory government. Reeves, as a member of Parliament, has had her own pay shored up with public money, and her pay packet is worth as much in real terms as it was in 2010 when she was first elected.

As I suggested: one rule for us; a different rule for them.

She won’t put any public money into building new houses for people on councils’ waiting lists:

See? She wants to make profit for builders by getting them building private houses. Great for those who can afford it – but those most in need won’t be able to, because she won’t make sure they’re paid the living wage that is required to make that happen. One rule for them…

So she won’t support the “ordinary working people” (as Labour now defines us) – but she’ll happily speak up for a former member of the Tory government that inflicted on us the cruel austerity that has caused so many of these problems.

In so doing, she also took a swipe at protest movements – causing This Writer to note (in another article) that without protesters, she wouldn’t have the right to vote, let alone the chance to have the second-highest job in the land. Here’s Howard Beckett to explain:

That brings us back to the Guardian interview, that took place in Reeves’s home town.

It seems she was desperate to demonstrate that she was still in touch with her family roots.

Sadly, she and her party have long since left their political roots far behind them.

Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:

Donate Button with Credit Cards

Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:

1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the right margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.

2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical

3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/

Join the Vox Political Facebook page.

4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com

5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/

6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical

7) Feel free to comment!

And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!

If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!

Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.

The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:

HWG PrintHWG eBook

The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:

SWAHTprint SWAHTeBook